The latest California law establishes a quota for “female” corporate board directors (SB-826):
More women directors serving on boards of directors of publicly held corporations will boost the California economy, improve opportunities for women in the workplace, and protect California taxpayers, shareholders, and retirees, including retired California state employees and teachers whose pensions are managed by CalPERS and CalSTRS. Yet studies predict that it will take 40 or 50 years to achieve gender parity, if something is not done proactively.
Numerous independent studies have concluded that publicly held companies perform better when women serve on their boards of directors
I.e., companies are so desperate to underperform that they will wait 40 or 50 years before doing something that gives them a competitive advantage.
Why “female” in quotes? The way that the bill is structured, companies can comply in about 5 minutes, without bringing in anyone new to serve on a board:
“Female” means an individual who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.
Suppose that a company does want a new board member who (a) is a California resident, (b) has identified as a woman for a long period of time, (c) has a lot of experience with raising funds, and (d) has managed a company that is in the public spotlight? The obvious choice? Elizabeth Holmes! (additional reason: she is blond)
Maybe this new quota system is all about getting Elizabeth Holmes back to work?
[Separately, why is there a quota only for women? If there is no need to adhere to the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, why wouldn’t there be a quota for African-American, Hispanic, Native-American, Asian-American, etc. board members?
Will Sheryl Sandberg establish a prize and recognition ceremony for companies that replace men of color with white women?
Woke Silicon Valley men often preface their feminist statements with “Because I have daughters…” Will we see one of these loyal Hillarists say “As the father of white daughters, I support this because I want to see my girls grow up to enjoy paychecks from diversity token jobs, not find that their path to quota-based success is blocked by black or Hispanic men”?]
Phil: Have these companies not already proved their stupidity by incorporating in California rather than Delaware?
Also, there is an ETF that tracks companies with women on the board. It’s not doing so good compared to the S&P 500.
This applies to Delaware corps as well: “foreign corporation that is a publicly held corporation, as defined, whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation’s SEC 10-K form, are located in California”
A company could get out from under this by changing the location of their “principal executive offices” to Las Vegas (also significantly cut down on the chance of high-paid executives being sued for divorce, custody, child support, etc.; see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Nevada for how the state mandates 50/50 shared parenting and caps child support profits at about $13,000/year). If the executives actually do move to Nevada for at least half the year and Gulfstream it back to California as necessary, maybe they can skip on the 13% state income tax? (no longer deductible from Federal due to the cruelty of the Trumpenfuhrer?)
Phil: That seems to solve the board problem, but couldn’t the plaintiff just serve the executive with the divorce papers when he Gulfstreams to California?
Tony: This is covered in http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Relocation
If a defendant lives in Nevada and has sex only in Nevada, I think it would be challenging for a plaintiff to get lucrative California jurisdiction. I think that there are a lot of these when a sex act occurs in New York State (profits capped at about $2 million per child) and a plaintiff moves to California to give birth and then seeks to use California law and courts (unlimited child support profits available by formula). If the executive is actually married and the household is in Nevada, however, I don’t know of a way for the plaintiff spouse to gain California jurisdiction.
Thses quotas are good news for non-cis temporally and geospatially gender fluid corporate directors (ie: men who only identify as women during board meetings in California).
Way to go! Appoint Ivanka T. to every corporate board in California!
Corporations will get a rare chance to double the salaries of those “fluid” corp directors as a compensation for the inconvenience of flying in and out.
Conveniently, they could also report a nice increase in the (average) compensation of their female employees.